


like tears in rain

by gdgdbaby



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-13
Updated: 2012-05-13
Packaged: 2017-11-05 08:02:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/404144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gdgdbaby/pseuds/gdgdbaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint puts a bullet through Sif's back. This is not called execution. It is called retirement.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like tears in rain

**Author's Note:**

> blade runner au fusion thing. super disjointed and non-linear and terrible, actually. sorry about that. won't make much sense unless you've seen the movie. originally posted at [livejournal](http://gdgdbaby.livejournal.com/87768.html).

Clint puts a bullet through Sif's back. It breaks clean through her spine and bursts out of her abdomen, shatters the tinted glass of three storefronts and buries itself in a soft mannequin.

This is not called execution.

It is called retirement.

 

    

  
_You're walking in the desert. It's hot—high noon, and the sun's beating down. You come across a tortoise on its back in the sand—_  
I'd pick it up and flip it over.  
 _Why?_  
It'd burn to death in the heat, wouldn't it?

 

Clint can't breathe. The ubiquitous Stark Industries billboard winks at him from up high, a slow-motion wash of pixels across a grimy screen. Thor's hand clenches around Clint's throat and presses him into the rickety ruins of the bus. Several feet away, Sif continues bleeding out onto the pavement next to Clint's gun.

"Wake up," Thor snarls. He grins, teeth stained red, jaw clicking. The hand around Clint's neck tightens. His vision goes spotty and bright. "Time to die."

 

    

  
_A man buys you a couple of drinks at the bar. You go home with him._  
Is this hypothetical situation supposed to be testing my empathy or my sex drive?  
 _Let me finish. You enter his apartment. He offers you something to eat. You accept. He goes to the kitchen. You see a bearskin rug on the floor in front of the fireplace. He comes out with a plate of escargot—_  
That's disgusting.  
 _Is it?_  
Yes, of course. I'd refuse.

 

Multiple shots fired, four in total:

Two grainy ones filter through Clint's monitor as he watches video footage of Coulson operating the Voight-Kampff machine at the Corporation. _Describe, in single words, only the good things that come into your mind about your father_. Loki blinks. He pulls a blaster out of his jacket. Shot 1. Shot 2. Coulson down.

There's the sharp crack as his bullet sings through the air. Sif is dead before she hits the ground.

The last gunshot echoes. Natasha shoots Thor outside the seedy bar and saves his life.

 

    

  
_You're walking down the street and you come across a group of men running an illegal cockfighting ring in an alleyway._  
I'd report them to the police.  
 _You wouldn't take matters into your own hands?_  
I might, if they provoked me.  
 _The cockfighting itself isn't enough of a provocation?_  


 

"I quit," Clint points out, slouching in his chair. "Quite a while ago, I might add."

"Well, un-quit," Fury replies, calm as ever. "I need the Hawk on this one."

"So you get Agent Hill to drag me away from lunch against my will?"

"Have you really ever done anything against your will? If you didn't want to be here, you wouldn't be."

Clint doesn't answer.

"This one's bad, Clint. Real bad. Six Replicants escaped from an off-world colony. Five male, one female. Slaughtered eighty people and jumped a shuttle. Three were fried trying to get into the Corporation. The other three are still at large."

"So give it to Coulson. He's your best runner—"

"I did."

Clint blinks. "What happened?"

Fury smiles thinly, without humor. "Lost my one good eye."

 

    

  
_Imagine you're reading an old novel, one that was published before the war. In it, the characters are having dinner in Guangzhou. Someone orders monkey brains. The waiter brings the monkey out, alive—_  
Stop it.  
 _What? I'm not finished—_  
I don't want to hear any more. That's sick.

 

"How many questions does it usually take?" Odin asks.

"I'm sorry. What are you trying to prove here, sir?"

"How many questions does it take to be sure someone is a Replicant?"

"After cross-referencing—twenty, thirty, maybe?

Odin smiles, sharp and calculating. An electric hawk shuffles on its perch in the corner of the room. "It took over a hundred with Natasha, didn't it?"

Clint frowns. "She doesn't know?"

"She is beginning to suspect, I think."

"How can she not know what she is?"

"She's a Black Widow," Odin says, as if that explains everything. "Peak physical and mental capacity, made to kill. Human memories are implanted at inception. They believe, for all intents and purposes, that they are human." He smiles again. "It makes them easier to control."

The hawk rustles its feathers and takes off.

 

    

  
_A young boy comes up to you and shows you his butterfly collection. He also shows you the killing jar._  
I'd take him to the doctor.

 

"Why did you follow me here?"

Natasha gazes at him, face unreadable. Her hair burns a deep burgundy in the low light. "I wanted to see you."

"You're seeing me."

"I just want to talk."

"So talk.

"I know you think that I'm—"

"I don't _think_ ," Clint says, and pushes his door open. "You're an android, Natasha."

She follows him into the apartment. "I'm not," she says, and holds out a photograph. Clint takes it. "Look, it's me with my mother. Twelve years old, at my first ballet recital—"

"Yes," Clint interrupts. "I know. She died in a house fire when you were fifteen."

"Odin told you?"

"He told me a lot of things." Clint pulls his gun out and empties the chamber, puts the safety on.

When his eyes flick up, Natasha's gone very still. She tracks the weapon as he sets it down onto the kitchen counter.

"Remember when you were six?" Clint asks quietly. "Your parents had a fight so you ran out of the house and crept underneath the porch. They were out looking for you for hours."

"What's your point?"

"Remember the bush outside your window with the spider in it?"

For the first time, Natasha looks shaken. A moment later, the crack in her mask is gone. "Yes."

"Black body, red hourglass on its stomach."

"I watched it feed all summer."

"And one day—"

"One day, there was an egg in the web. Later, it hatched. The mother ate all of the baby spiders. There were thousands of them."

Clint watches her face. "You never told anyone about it."

"No," she says flatly. "I didn't."

"I'm sorry," Clint says. He means it.

 

    

  
_You're on your way to work._  
What job?  
 _It doesn't matter. You're about to leave the house. You put your foot in your shoe and step on a gecko inside it._  
I'd be horrified.  
 _Why?_  
You don't wake up with a lizard in your shoe every day.

 

Natasha puts a bullet through Thor's head for him. Clint drops to the ground, gasping. A bruise blooms around his neck. His back aches, and there's a tooth or three loose in his mouth. He spits blood.

She helps him up.

"Thank you," he says.

"How many are left?" she asks coolly, passing the gun back. He takes it. She reaches out, as if to brush a hand over the swell of his cheek, but stops before she touches him.

"Just one."

 

    

  
_You're watching television at home and a spider suddenly lands on your arm._  
I'd scoop it up in a cup and let it outside.  
 _You wouldn't kill it?_  
No.  
 _Why not?_  
I like spiders. 

 

"He called me a prodigal son in the end, you know." Loki cocks his head to the side. "But he's dead, now. It doesn't matter anymore."

Clint's breath rattles in and out of his chest. His entire right side is still numb with pain. He tries to concentrate.

"I have seen things you've never even dreamed of, Agent Barton. Chitauri in glorious battle off the shoulder of Asgard, the tilt of the Bifröst as it broke beneath Mjölnir's weight. I've seen cargo ships twist away infinitely into the abyss and watched the sun rise over oil drills as far as the eye can see in the Andromeda system, burnt to a crisp in less than a second. All these things will be lost, in time. It will be as if they never happened at all."

Loki's lips tilt up. His hands spasm. Three floors below, on a collapsing balcony, Natasha stirs from unconsciousness. The rain keeps falling. Clint can hear a familiar jingle from the shopping district float by, borne on the wind. A crow flutters down to perch on Loki's shoulder.

"Time to die."

 

    

  
_You are trapped in a cave with a starving lion. The only way to get out is to kill it, and you have one bullet left in your gun._  
What would you do, Agent Barton?  
 _I'm not the one being tested._  
No, but I'm curious. Consider it a personal question.  
 _I'd kill it. Put it out of its misery._  


 

"You were supposed to retire her, too," Fury remarks. Hill's index finger pulls taut against the trigger of her blaster. Natasha gazes steadily at the barrel of the thing, unblinking. "She went rogue."

Clint glances at Natasha. Her eyebrows arch high. "I made a different call," he says. "To be frank, I think she'll fit right in here."

There's a long stretch of silence. Fury motions at Hill. She tucks her gun back into its holster and melts into the shadows.

"It's too bad you won't live," Fury says finally, voice bland, and tosses her a file.

Natasha catches it in the cradle of her arm.

Fury's eyes slide toward Clint. He looks pensive. "But then again, who does?"


End file.
